Crime isn't an issue that the Wizard often writes about. Despite the fact that criminal activity is something that is pervasive in all societies and a fact of life that nobody can ever get around, it wasn't something that interested me too much. Maybe it was because I grew up in a fairly safe middle to upper-middle class neighborhood that made me not dwell on the topic very much, or perhaps it was my generally optimistic view on life that made me not think about crime, but I digress.
Maybe it was reading the story about Richardo Richell that scared the daylights out of me, or maybe it was reading that Conroe police officer Michael Tindall has been accused of robbing a bank for a petty $28,000, an amount that may well not be enough to cover his attorney's fees for defending him. Or maybe it was reading that there are bookshelves full of case studies that have been done that indicate that eyewitness identification of those accused are often shown to be mistaken that set me to writing about the need for a regional criminal lab.
City Councilwoman Jolanda Jones wrote an editorial recently discussing the matter of a regional crime lab. Ms. Jones makes a good point about the issue of Houston police running their own crime lab and then trying to present its results in trial against defendants. Houston's problems are not unique, as this link and all these stories from searching for the term "crime labs" suggest. But the issue may well go further than simply creating a regional crime lab. It has to do with the idea that such a lab would be funded by the law enforcement agencies of the region that would be the - how shall one say - customers of such an institution. One reasonable question to ask is that who would be making the decisions on hiring and qualifications for staffing such an institution? It would seem to me that it would be... the government!
It seems to me that there are two things that need to be added to enable a regional crime lab to be more effective at doing its job. First is that such a lab would need to have enough money in its budgets to hold onto accredited and qualified personnel and clear its case loads in a timely manner, and second it would seem that the criminal defense bars of the region need to have someone on site to verify procedures and lab results from the crime lab. After all, that was the very problem that Ms. Jones and others discovered with the Houston police department crime lab to begin with. Perhaps all who are accused, whether they are accused of a simple traffic violation or of something much worse, could be assessed, as part of their bail, a non-refundable token sum of money that would go towards funding the regional crime lab, and could also go towards funding defense bar inspection and oversight of such a lab. Not doing so could open the door to merely transferring the problems of shoddy lab conditions, poor management of samples, not to mention sloppy handling of evidence, from a Houston police department run lab to the new regional lab. That is simply unacceptable.
Wizard
I suppose the Wizard is a little late on commenting on Harris County Metro's decision to use Obama money - aka federal stimulus funds - to convert its current HOV lanes to high occupancy toll (HOT) lanes. I was thinking of not posting anything at all on the subject on the grounds that I did not have anything new to say about the matter that somebody hadn't groused about before - that the lanes were allegedly not going to help with traffic congestion, that the lanes were allegedly not being used enough already, that HOT lanes are only for owners of Lexus vehicles and not for the rest of us, and so on.
However there is one aspect of the HOV lane issue that has not been addressed in this recent spate of stories and public commentary and that, gentle readers, has to do with HOV lanes and the 2003 bond election ballot. You remember that election, don't you? The one where you, dear Houstonian, thought that you were voting for rail - right? Well, maybe its time we jar our memories and revisit some of what Metro proposed during the November 2003 bond election.
What few people remember is that there were several components in the November 2003 bond election ballot language. One of those components (we will leave out the others so as to not complicate things here) was that Metro said it would double the lane mileage of HOV lanes that would be available, via modifying the current HOV network to make it two way reversible.
Some months ago, former Houston mayoral candidate Bill King spoke before the Houston Property Rights Association about transportation. The Wizard queried Mr. King about the issue of reversible or two way HOV / HOT lanes. The Wizard inquired about the idea of reverse commutes whereby some people commute in the opposite direction simply because they live in the inner part of the urbanized area, but commute towards jobs that are located further out from the urban core. King stated that one aspect of HOV lanes operating only one way at a time, then reversing lane operations in the opposite direction for evening hours was that this reflected 1970's style thinking. The incorporation of two lanes of HOT lanes operating at all hours in both directions along the Katy Freeway reflects more modern thinking on urban mobility. The idea is to simply expand on this concept and push it all the way throughout the Houston area.
Poor people will in fact pay to use lanes, if it is important enough for them to use them. One of my many vivid memories of living in China 17-18 years ago was the willingness of ordinary Chinese, who at that time were making probably $40 - $50 per month, to pay for taxi trips when they really needed to get somewhere in a hurry. Even fairly short taxi trips in Beijing or Shanghai could set my Chinese friends and acquaintances back a full 1-2 days pay, but it never ceased to amaze me how many times they whipped out their purses and wallets to pay for a cab ride when they really wanted or needed to get somewhere fast. People really do make their decisions on the margin.
Then there are issues of legality. Arguably, since Metro stipulated that expanding the HOV / HOT lane concept was to be a part of the 2003 bond election, then the agency is obligated to actually come through with this promise. The agency has already effectively reneged on its promise of 50 percent more bus service in the metropolitan area. Not going through with doubling the number of route miles of HOV / HOT lanes would destroy what remains of the agency's credibility, reopening the charge that the 2003 bond election was nothing but about desperately desiring rail lines and condemnation zones for redevelopment.
The Chronicle editorial, published March 20th, 2009, stated that Metro would get to keep toll road monies raised. One aspect of the HOV / HOT lane conversion is that there are clearly some areas where it is going to be difficult to add an extra lane through reconfiguration of what is already there. One example of this is the buried stretch of Interstate 59 which runs through midtown Houston from downtown through the Greenway Plaza area, and onto IH-610 Loop. Monies raised through the collection of tolls should be dedicated towards widening the freeway, if need be, to accommodate the extra lane of traffic.
Next: We talk about the proposed regional crime lab.
Wizard
Today, the Houston Chronicle's new transportation beat writer Rosanna Ruiz broke the news that the unelected board of the Harris County Metropolitan Transit Authority decided not publicize the details of their Facility Provider (FP) contract with Parsons Transport Group before a board vote on the contract that is to be scheduled during a special meeting on Wednesday. The story generated tons of comments on the Chronicle's website, as well as a protest from Jennifer Pebbles from Texas Watchdog, and posts from various bloggers.
Well, what does the Wizard have to say about this? Not much, other than to reveal yet another small pearl that I possess in my treasure hoard. And what, pray tell is that? Well gentle readers, it just so happens that the Wizard possesses a copy of Metro's 2007 FP contract that the agency negotiated with the previous vendor, Washington Group International, which is now a part of URS Corporation. You see, I put in for a Freedom of Information request to Metro sometime around May or June of 2007 for a copy of Metro's contract with WGI. I received a copy of the FP contract, (number CT0700035 to be precise), and dated May 8, 2007, several weeks later at the cost of somewhere around fifty dollars.
The May 2007 FP contract that I received runs into many hundreds of pages and covers an astronomical number of issues; including (but not by any means limited to) estimated project costs for the first phase of the contract, not to mention delving into matters like stray current, provisions for dealing with hazardous materials, performance and reliability issues, ride quality requirements, design of train stations, access to records, contracting with small and disadvantaged businesses, indemnification and insurance issues, corrosion control, hopes and financing for transit oriented development, project bidding, dispute resolution, and so on. Yes, there really is a lot more to this than simply getting to take a trip on a rigid, non-maneuverable form of transportation and riding it without having to pay for it. The contract is so thick that it immediately put any thought of trying to copy it and posting it online out of the question.
The point being made here, however, is that Metro has in fact made available to interested members of the public copies of previous FP contracts. So why are David Wolff and company turning gun shy now?
Sigh...
Wizard
Inrix, a privately held provider of traffic data and traffic congestion solutions, recently published a national scorecard of traffic congestion, bottlenecks, and travel time indices of metropolitan areas across the United States. According to the Wall Street Journal, Inrix collects data on road congestion, in part, from a million vehicles equipped with GPS-enabled devices like cellphones and car navigation systems. The company stated in the accompanying press release that the data was:
revealing a 30 percent decline in traffic congestion in 2008 during the peak periods on major roads in urban America. Overall the report found that 99 of the top 100 most populated cities in the U.S. experienced decreases in traffic congestion levels in 2008 as compared to the prior year. The Scorecard contains the most accurate and current information in the country regarding overall congestion and bottlenecks on nearly 50,000 miles of America’s major roadways, and is compiled using tens of billions of data points from INRIX’s network of nearly one million GPS-enabled cars and trucks traveling across over 800,000 miles of roads.
The report cites turbulent fuel prices and a struggling economy as sources for a consistent decline in overall traffic volume. Detroit, where the jobless rate climbed past 21 percent in 2008, saw the second largest decrease in congestion nationwide. Additionally, Riverside, Calif., which ranked third-highest in the nation in foreclosure activity during 2008, saw the highest drop in congestion of the nation’s larger regions.
“On average, Americans spent 13 hours less stuck in traffic in 2008 versus 2007,” said Bryan Mistele, INRIX president and CEO. “While less traffic is generally good news, the causes of it aren’t necessarily something to celebrate. Traffic congestion is an excellent indicator of trends, telling us whether businesses are shipping products, whether people are going to work, and whether shoppers are going to the mall. The Scorecard provides an amazing lens through which we can see these and other major events unfolding across the country.”
Traffic congestion really is a lens through which you can view overall activity in the broader economy. Only Baton Rouge Louisiana had worst traffic congestion in 2008 than in 2007. Also, Inrix wrote that
National congestion levels were essentially the same when comparing the first and second halves of 2008, thus it seems that higher fuel prices in early 2008 and the slower economy later in the year netted the same drop in overall congestion.
So, what about Houston? Well, Houston's scorecard can be viewed here. What I find interesting are two things. First, Houston's overall congestion is measured at only 34 percent of that found in Los Angeles, the most congested metropolitan area in the United States. That is because LA has the fewest miles per capita of freeways of any major metropolitan area in America. Second, the data confirms what is probably intuitively obvious to many Houstonians. The overall worst traffic bottlenecks in the Houston area are to be found in the Galleria area. Six out of the top eleven worst bottlenecks are found along IH 610 Loop (southbound and northbound) and various entry or exits to the Galleria, including Westheimer, San Felipe, and Post Oak Boulevard. The exit at 610 Loop and Richmond Avenue comes in at number 22 on the bottleneck list.
The good news is that none of Houston's interchanges make the top 100 list of Inrix's worst segments or interchanges for traffic bottlenecks. The bad news, comparatively, is that every single one of Houston's 25 worst bottlenecks climbed up the overall rankings for bottleneck severity when comparing the 2008 data to the 2007 data, but that almost certainly reveals that the downturn in 2008 has affected Houston less than it has other areas of the country, an observation confirmed by the fact that Houston's travel time index declined only slightly in 2008 verses 2007.
Enough for now. There are other things I want to write about, so stay tuned.
Wizard